Agree or disagree? Kids should only play travel sports if they have college or pro potential

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While I have always admired highly athletic kids and wish them the best, I am just so glad that mine never fell into that category. The commitment required for travel sports sounds exhausting, and many of the parents seem insufferable. And for what? The vast majority of the kids end up putting the sport largely behind them, more often than not before college. I just don't get the appeal.

I don’t understand why people care so much about what other kids do. But I’ll bite..our kids enjoyed travel sports because they loved their sport, got frustrated in rec when kids missed games and practice at the drop of a hat, liked the competitive nature and overall higher skill and commitment levels in travel. None of them had any interest or desire to play in college. But they made great friends, stayed fit, and had great time management skills which served them well in high school and college.

Why isn’t the same disdain shown to non athletic extracurriculars? It gets old.

I wouldn't say I have disdain for travel sports or other highly competitive expensive exracurriculars, but I would never let my child do them. Money aside, these activities are intense abd really don't allow kids to be kids and have a childhood. I don't want my child so busy that they do not have time for much else.

[Anonymous]

I’m sure it depends on the particular nature of your travel team but disagree for my kid. He does travel baseball and our team is laidback and not expensive (as far as travel costs go). He loves baseball and enjoys playing with kids with commensurate ability. There are a ton of travel baseball teams in this area so we don’t travel far, if at all. I like that he’s learning the values of hard work, commitment, and camaraderie; could he learn that through non-travel sport activities? Of course. But baseball is his thing.

There is no college scholarship in his future. We take one season at a time and reevaluate on a frequent basis whether this continues to work for our family. He didn’t start playing until 12u and was the one who asked to do it.

[Anonymous]

Our kids play travel sports because DH and I both played travel sports then a college sport, so for us it is just a lifestyle that we love and are comfortable with spending our time and money to support. Ironically, our youngest son chose about the only 2 sports that neither of us played growing up (ice hockey and lacrosse), so we're having fun learning along the way, but the level of athleticism and parental commitment required is the same across most sports (though hockey is really expensive). Older kids played travel sports then D1 and D3 athletics (no scholarship for either). Wouldn't change it for the world. We just love sports.

[Anonymous]

I will never understand the travel sport hate. It's an activity! My 6th grade kid goes and practices 3 afternoons per week, totalling 5 hours a week. She hangs out with friends, does something good for her body and mind, and learns a lot.

On weekends she has a game with her team, which is also fun and makes the bond all the stronger.

What's the issue here?

If she was into music, would you say she shouldn't practice 3X week?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I will never understand the travel sport hate. It's an activity! My 6th grade kid goes and practices 3 afternoons per week, totalling 5 hours a week. She hangs out with friends, does something good for her body and mind, and learns a lot.

On weekends she has a game with her team, which is also fun and makes the bond all the stronger.

What's the issue here?

If she was into music, would you say she shouldn't practice 3X week?

Does she have free time to play and hang out with friends though? Hanging out with friends in an organized setting isn't the same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you disagree, please share why you're willing to put up with the expense, the travel, and the crazy parents.

For starters, how are you supposed to know what potential your kid has in the sport if they're not playing at the highest level available to them in their sport?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will never understand the travel sport hate. It's an activity! My 6th grade kid goes and practices 3 afternoons per week, totalling 5 hours a week. She hangs out with friends, does something good for her body and mind, and learns a lot.

On weekends she has a game with her team, which is also fun and makes the bond all the stronger.

What's the issue here?

If she was into music, would you say she shouldn't practice 3X week?

Does she have free time to play and hang out with friends though? Hanging out with friends in an organized setting isn't the same.

Having free time to play with friends in an unstructured environment is nice for little kids, but as kids get older, we liked keeping them too busy with sports and school to get into any trouble. We also liked that they were unwilling to put anything in their bodies that might compromise their athletics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While I have always admired highly athletic kids and wish them the best, I am just so glad that mine never fell into that category. The commitment required for travel sports sounds exhausting, and many of the parents seem insufferable. And for what? The vast majority of the kids end up putting the sport largely behind them, more often than not before college. I just don't get the appeal.

I don’t understand why people care so much about what other kids do. But I’ll bite..our kids enjoyed travel sports because they loved their sport, got frustrated in rec when kids missed games and practice at the drop of a hat, liked the competitive nature and overall higher skill and commitment levels in travel. None of them had any interest or desire to play in college. But they made great friends, stayed fit, and had great time management skills which served them well in high school and college.

Why isn’t the same disdain shown to non athletic extracurriculars? It gets old.

I wouldn't say I have disdain for travel sports or other highly competitive expensive exracurriculars, but I would never let my child do them. Money aside, these activities are intense abd really don't allow kids to be kids and have a childhood. I don't want my child so busy that they do not have time for much else.

So if your kid developed a particular passion that they loved enough to put the time in to improve, be it music or sports or whatever, you'd discourage it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will never understand the travel sport hate. It's an activity! My 6th grade kid goes and practices 3 afternoons per week, totalling 5 hours a week. She hangs out with friends, does something good for her body and mind, and learns a lot.

On weekends she has a game with her team, which is also fun and makes the bond all the stronger.

What's the issue here?

If she was into music, would you say she shouldn't practice 3X week?

Does she have free time to play and hang out with friends though? Hanging out with friends in an organized setting isn't the same.

Having free time to play with friends in an unstructured environment is nice for little kids, but as kids get older, we liked keeping them too busy with sports and school to get into any trouble. We also liked that they were unwilling to put anything in their bodies that might compromise their athletics.

I might agree with you if it was high schoolers, but imo elementary and middle school kids need time to play with their friends and be unstructured. Who's to say older kids don't want that? Why arebt they allowed to be kids too? Just because some kids will get into trouble doesn't mean they all will.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I see some parents are comparing travel sports to other non-sport extracurriculars. Can someone share what non-sport extracurricular activities cost as much as travel sports, requires as much time from the parents, and puts as much stress on kids' bodies?

I have a kid who did children’s theater for years and a kid who did travel soccer and theater was a lot worse. Parents were nastier, rehearsal schedules much more intense than the travel soccer, and the parent volunteer stagehand requirements were far more than anything I saw in travel soccer. Cost was about equivalent.

Where?

I have a kid who has done several community theater productions and not my experience at all. There is no fee to participate. You can donate but it's sincerely not required. Rehearsal schedules are intense for tech weeks and during performance time. That's a couple weeks. And couldn't find a less nasty group of people What is there to be nasty about? Are people heckling during the performances? Pretty minimal volunteer requirements too. Typically kids do all of the stagehand and crew work. The tech crew kids are a whole other thing in theater from the performers and a lot of kids do this.

Youth theater company. Cost-wise, about the same cost as travel soccer. I think recreational community theater is more like rec sports, so you might not have encountered the same thing. The nastiness was based on kids looks, which was horrifying to hear. We were expected to put a lot of time into set volunteering and backstage management, far more than I did with travel soccer.

That having been said, my friend with a kid in a competitive ballet academy puts my theater stories to shame. OMG. Ballet parents are vicious.

What is a youth theater company? Did your kid get a paycheck?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will never understand the travel sport hate. It's an activity! My 6th grade kid goes and practices 3 afternoons per week, totalling 5 hours a week. She hangs out with friends, does something good for her body and mind, and learns a lot.

On weekends she has a game with her team, which is also fun and makes the bond all the stronger.

What's the issue here?

If she was into music, would you say she shouldn't practice 3X week?

Does she have free time to play and hang out with friends though? Hanging out with friends in an organized setting isn't the same.

PP here. Of course! And that includes hanging out with the kids from her team. The other, not insignificant, part of this is that she now has friends from a bunch of places in her life, so when school social life gets rocky, she's got sports friends, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will never understand the travel sport hate. It's an activity! My 6th grade kid goes and practices 3 afternoons per week, totalling 5 hours a week. She hangs out with friends, does something good for her body and mind, and learns a lot.

On weekends she has a game with her team, which is also fun and makes the bond all the stronger.

What's the issue here?

If she was into music, would you say she shouldn't practice 3X week?

Does she have free time to play and hang out with friends though? Hanging out with friends in an organized setting isn't the same.

Having free time to play with friends in an unstructured environment is nice for little kids, but as kids get older, we liked keeping them too busy with sports and school to get into any trouble. We also liked that they were unwilling to put anything in their bodies that might compromise their athletics.

I might agree with you if it was high schoolers, but imo elementary and middle school kids need time to play with their friends and be unstructured. Who's to say older kids don't want that? Why arebt they allowed to be kids too? Just because some kids will get into trouble doesn't mean they all will.

5 hours a week is not going to crimp any adolescent's style.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I will never understand the travel sport hate. It's an activity! My 6th grade kid goes and practices 3 afternoons per week, totalling 5 hours a week. She hangs out with friends, does something good for her body and mind, and learns a lot.

On weekends she has a game with her team, which is also fun and makes the bond all the stronger.

What's the issue here?

If she was into music, would you say she shouldn't practice 3X week?

This is basically what competitive winter swim is like. My kid does it as a 6th grader.

There is a level of travel sport at this age that involves genuinely traveling a lot of weekends, driving very far away, flying places, spending the night in a hotel, pulling the kid from school, etc. More and more it gets like that if they stick with it as they are older.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will never understand the travel sport hate. It's an activity! My 6th grade kid goes and practices 3 afternoons per week, totalling 5 hours a week. She hangs out with friends, does something good for her body and mind, and learns a lot.

On weekends she has a game with her team, which is also fun and makes the bond all the stronger.

What's the issue here?

If she was into music, would you say she shouldn't practice 3X week?

Does she have free time to play and hang out with friends though? Hanging out with friends in an organized setting isn't the same.

Having free time to play with friends in an unstructured environment is nice for little kids, but as kids get older, we liked keeping them too busy with sports and school to get into any trouble. We also liked that they were unwilling to put anything in their bodies that might compromise their athletics.

I might agree with you if it was high schoolers, but imo elementary and middle school kids need time to play with their friends and be unstructured. Who's to say older kids don't want that? Why arebt they allowed to be kids too? Just because some kids will get into trouble doesn't mean they all will.

5 hours a week is not going to crimp any adolescent's style.

Only 5 hours a week? Never heard of travel sports taking up only 5 hours a week.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you disagree, please share why you're willing to put up with the expense, the travel, and the crazy parents.

For starters, how are you supposed to know what potential your kid has in the sport if they're not playing at the highest level available to them in their sport?

I have a few kids and absolutely, you can tell which kids will have potential in a particularly activity. Athleticism, talent, motivation, and drive (willingness to work hard independently) can reveal itself pretty early on. For other non-sports activities too, it's talent, motivation, and drive. It starts early on in any activity you put your kid in. By the time you're considering travel sports, I think most parents have a realistic idea as to their kids' potential. If they only have motivation and drive, that's ok too and many parents have said they do it because their kids want to. But I'm pretty sure those parents know what level their kids are.

It sounds like OP does not think that travel sports is not worth it if the whole package is not there (athleticism, talent, motivation, and drive).